The present invention relates to relational database management systems, and more specifically, to scalar text search optimization for relational database management systems.
The process of searching database systems, such as Relational Database Management Systems (RDBMS), Information Management Systems, and XML Store, may be facilitated using an external Text Indexing and Search Server (TISS). Full text search functionality to unstructured or semi-structured information may be provided by the TISS. The information in the database may be pushed or pulled to a TISS for indexing and searching.
Such searches may be requested by a user initiated Structured Query Language (SQL) query. This SQL query may contain relational, as well as full text, predicates. In response to such a query, a database system, such as a RDBMS, may compute the selectivity of the relational predicate and retrieve it from a TISS for the full text predicate. Based on the selectivity, a RDBMS optimizer may use a formula to select a query execution plan. This query execution plan may be, for example, a “table-value” plan or a “scalar” plan.